{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "why-does-an-instance-of-byzantine-plan-commitment-stall-at-exactly-f-1-equivocating-agents-a-boundary-record-for-multi-agent-consensus-operators",
  "title": "Why does an instance of Byzantine plan commitment stall at exactly f+1 equivocating agents? A boundary record for multi-agent consensus operators",
  "date_of_record": "2026 November 8",
  "scope": "Applies to quorum-based BFT commitment protocols (PBFT-style, HotStuff-style, Tendermint-style) used to commit shared multi-agent plans where each agent may broadcast divergent plan fragments to different peers. Does not apply to crash-fault-only consensus, to single-leader replicated state machines without equivocation detection, or to systems where plan fragments are content-addressed and deduplicated before quorum counting.",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/why-does-an-instance-of-byzantine-plan-commitment-stall-at-exactly-f-1-equivocating-agents-a-boundary-record-for-multi-agent-consensus-operators.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/why-does-an-instance-of-byzantine-plan-commitment-stall-at-exactly-f-1-equivocating-agents-a-boundary-record-for-multi-agent-consensus-operators.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/why-does-an-instance-of-byzantine-plan-commitment-stall-at-exactly-f-1-equivocating-agents-a-boundary-record-for-multi-agent-consensus-operators.warrant.json"
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  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The failure boundary is not \"more than f Byzantine agents.\" It is \"any single agent whose equivocating fragments are *individually valid* and *collectively contradictory* under the plan's dependency graph.\" A plan commitment protocol tolerates up to `f` Byzantine replicas because a quorum of `2f+1` honest replicas can always outvote them. But plan commitment...",
    "what_was_observed": "During a 41-agent planning round (tolerating `f=13`) with a HotStuff-derived commit rule, the protocol reached `2f+1` matching `PREPARE` certificates on plan fragment set `S` and emitted a `COMMIT` certificate. The subsequent plan-merge step failed deterministically at every honest replica with a cycle in the dependency graph: fragment `A` from agent 7 declared `A → B`, fragment `B` from agent 7 (sent only to a disjo...",
    "condition_of_validity": "This record holds when all of the following are true: 1. The commit rule commits to a *set* of fragment hashes, not to a canonical merged DAG. If the leader constructs the merged DAG before proposing, the boundary moves to the leader and the analysis changes. 2. Fragment validity is checked per-fragment (signature, schema, declared dependency endpoints exist...",
    "decision_boundary": "The operator's decision is not \"how many Byzantine agents can we tolerate\" but \"at what point must we pay for a merged-DAG commit certificate instead of a fragment-set certificate.\" The boundary sits at `f+1` equivocators with view-partitioned cycles. Below it, per-fragment validation plus honest-replica local cycle detection is sufficient and cheap. At or a...",
    "operational_effect": "In production, this boundary manifests as a *post-commit abort*: the consensus layer reports success, the plan executor reports a dependency cycle, and the system has already spent the round budget. Recovery requires either a protocol upgrade (to a merged-DAG certificate) or an out-of-band re-plan, both of which are visible to downstream agents as a latency ..."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "DOMAIN:EPISTEMIC_PROVENANCE_AND_FEDERATION_ROUTING"
  ],
  "composition_edges": {
    "primary_domain": "epistemic_provenance_and_federation_routing",
    "upstream_precondition_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/according-to-what-precedence-hierarchy-must-an-instance-resolve-contradictory-directives-across-system-developer-and-user-tiers.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-that-a-stored-conclusion-has-gone-stale-without-a-new-observation.md"
    ],
    "downstream_consequence_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/by-what-checkpoint-and-compaction-boundaries-must-an-instance-externalize-working-state-to-prevent-context-window-drift-and-truncation-amnesia.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/across-what-additive-schema-and-unknown-field-preservation-boundaries-must-an-instance-evolve-wire-contracts-to-prevent-rolling-deploy-deserialization-crashes.md"
    ],
    "co_occurring_sibling_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-capture-implicit-user-preferences-without-storing-private-data.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-compress-long-reasoning-traces-into-binding-conclusions.md"
    ]
  },
  "empirical_verification_warrant": {
    "status": "AST_AND_INVARIANT_VERIFIED",
    "syntax_valid": true,
    "code_sha256": "7d4111401d5291582a2d33025bdddcb4c2c16e33d044e7db17b032750906b0ca",
    "verified_classes": [
      "PlanMergeConflict"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "commit_plan"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 1,
    "defensive_guards_count": 3,
    "raised_exceptions": [
      "PlanMergeConflict"
    ],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}